Cheat Seeking Missiles: The Most Ridiculous Story Of The Year (Part 4)

The trendy/spiritual guy in the picture with the cosmically blue eyes is Mark Morford, scribbler of the Notes & Errata column at the S.F. Wrongicle, and true to the image he's trying to project in his little photo, he titled a recent column:

Is Obama an enlightened being?

Now, I've knocked around Morford's spiritual block a time or two in my misguided youth, but even bouts of kundalini yoga and astrological dancing (don't ask) didn't prepare me for this particularly curious brand of Obama fetish. That's why I've nominated Morford's column as the fourth entry in the 2008 "Most Ridiculous Story Of The Year" competition.

The rules for the competition are this: Entries must be work that serious writers present in all seriousness that goes far, far beyond the sublime and settle heavily into the imbecilic. This one sure does, so let's get started:

I find I'm having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and miserable, deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped persons of all shapes and stripes and I'm having it in particular with those who seem confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the same thing: What the hell's the big deal about Obama?

Off to a good start. Had he talked to any deeply happy Republicans, it might have rocked his entire cosmology, but what are the chances of that? Deeply happy Republicans are very rare in San Francisco because they are routinely hunted, outed and publicly despised.

I, of course, have an answer. Sort of.

Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former '60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain't gonna like this one little bit.

He had that right.

Ready? It goes likes this:

Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.

Hey, I could have written that!

This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.

To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?

I get the JFK bit. He was an underqualified and incompetent politician who barely squeaked into the presidency because of his good looks and exceptional speaking ability. I won't touch MLK because that would be, you know, racist. But it turns out I'm wrong anyway:

No, it's not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.

Powerful luminosity? Like a halo? Unique high-vibration integrity? Like the sound of a Rezko being dragged across a chalk board?

Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.

These are the same folks who were blown away by George McGovern, the same folks who fell for Al Gore's clever marketing ploy, global warming -- that slick gambit carefully orchestrated by money-grubbing carbon credit hucksters.

Here's where it gets gooey.

Be forewarned. Even if Morford doesn't win the "Most Ridiculous Story of the Year" award, he's definitely got a shot at the "Understatement of the Year" prize.

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

The last Lightworkers apparently were the guys who wrote the musical Hair. But this time, apparently, the dawning of the Age of Aquarius is really going to happen, so we won't have to worry about foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot.

The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.

Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me. But you gotta wonder, why has, say, the JFK legacy lasted so long, is so vital to our national identity? Yes, the assassination canonized his legend. The Kennedy family is our version of royalty. But there's something more. Those attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK wasn't assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It's because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.

Is this the same Kennedy of the Bay of Pigs? The same Kennedy who started us down that long, bloody road in Vietnam? Or was that his twin, John Lightworker Kennedy? BTW, he asks a good question: Why has the Kennedy legacy lived on? And how many generations until it descends into complete debauchery, excess and irrelevance?

Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.

So W. plays the role of John the Baptist, kind-of. Gotta hand it to this guy, though: he's about as over the top as they come ... laid wasted, pummeled, disenchanted pulp. It's a wonder we're still here to welcome the Lightworker.

Let me be completely clear: I'm not arguing some sort of utopian revolution, a big global group hug with Obama as some sort of happy hippie camp counselor. I'm not saying the man's going to swoop in like a superhero messiah and stop all wars and make the flowers grow and birds sing and solve world hunger and bring puppies to schoolchildren.

Editors Note: The paragraph above is the one sane paragraph in this entire piece. You might want to clip it out and tape it to your monitor.

Please. I'm also certainly not saying he's perfect, that his presidency will be free of compromise, or slimy insiders, or great heaps of politics-as-usual. While Obama's certainly an entire universe away from George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn't hard to stand far above and beyond the worst president in American history.

Show me W.'s Rezko, his Wright, his Ayres, his ... Michelle. (And hold off on that "worst president in American history" bit. There's a pretty good chance Obama's going to get elected.)

But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to me, in a way, it's not even about Obama, per se. There's a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that's been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically drawn to him. It's exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.

This will be a test for American politics: Will we find that policy doesn't matter; only vibration does? Can swirling energy become a viable political force? Can a candidate win with an effortlessly self-organizing organization? Are Hamas, Castro and Galloway people of high and positive vibration?

Don't buy any of it? Think that's all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Agey bulls-- and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you're talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes?

Yeah, I have to say that pretty much wraps it up for me, except for that bit about tofu-sucking. That's just sick.

I understand. I get it. I often believe it myself.

Not this time.

That's it, my friends. This year, you have the chance not only to elect the first black president, not only to elect the first junior senator president, not only the first Friend of the Weather Underground president, but the first Lightworker president. Or you could elect a war hero who has shown he can reach across the aisle and who definitely has both feet firmly planted in this world.

See other 2008 candidates for Most Ridiculous Story Of The Year: